


Trophy

by jenna_thorn



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Little Brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:32:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3814057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor, sullen with his injuries, yanked his arm away, but the buckle at his wrist caught the gossamer fine sleeve of the woman standing over him. She twitched her wrist, and her sleeve fell away, reweaving itself as she stood. He glared at the floor between his feet; he knew well the repercussions of directing his ire at his mother’s handmaidens. “Time will do the rest, my lady,” she said, ignoring the princely tantrum as she moved to the door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trophy

Thor, sullen with his injuries, yanked his arm away, but the buckle at his wrist caught the gossamer fine sleeve of the woman standing over him. She twitched her wrist, and her sleeve fell away, reweaving itself as she stood. He glared at the floor between his feet; he knew well the repercussions of directing his ire at his mother’s handmaidens. “Time will do the rest, my lady,” she said, ignoring the princely tantrum as she moved to the door.

He threw himself chest down on the chaise, wincing as he pulled the still healing wound over his ribs, but refusing to curl into himself. Rather than meet his mother’s eyes, he traced the inlay on the floor with a fingertip, devoting the whole of his attention instead on the intricate tile work, roots crawling over and around one another, brown on black.

He huffed when a trailing strand of hair drifted back to the corner of his mouth. Frigga brushed it to the side with the back of her hand, but he refused to look up. The roots under his fingertips twisted through a watery screen and he pulled his arm under him, welcoming the burn of the tear in his skin and muscle. Frigga said, “A lesson in patience will serve you well, my son.” She patted his shoulder at the edge of the bindings and rose with a nod to Loki, watching from the corner, at the very edge of Thor’s line of sight.

“Can’t you do something useful, Loki?” Thor growled and Loki threw a book at him. It hit the back of the divan, then flopped partly open onto Thor’s bound ribs. He snarled, grabbed it and spun it back toward Loki, who caught it one handed and executed exactly the same throw, again missing Thor’s head and hitting the upholstered couch to drop, all its energy gone, to land on Thor’s back. He pulled it off and waved it at the fire. 

“Think twice,” Loki said. “Mother would be upset.”

“Pfeh.”

“Then Father would be angry.”

Thor let the book fall to the floor. “I wouldn’t really do it."

“Yes, you would,” Loki retorted, "and then I’d have to –“

Thor interrupted, “Game with me, brother.”

“I’ll beat you, and then you’ll be even more fractious.”

“Fine, tell me of the end of the hunt.”

Loki rolled his eyes, but answered, “The fearsome beast was slain, shining blades piercing his spleen, torrent of bodily fluids staining the ground, and so forth.” He stared out the window.

“Do it right.”

Loki crossed the room and picked up the book, closing it gently, then sat, his legs folded under him, on the foot of Thor’s bed, careful of the wrapped leg to his side and deliberately thumping the book onto the other one. “As my words are insufficient to the tale,” he said. He passed his hands through the air, and falling from his fingers to dance along the floor, icy mist coalesced into the fearsome beast rearing back to fall forward and strike its hooves in the bright splash of Thor’s cloak spread on the ground before it. Hogun, a dark shadow of black and muted brown, slid through the heartblood red to distract it from Thor’s fallen form. Mid trample and off-balance, the villsvinsvart twisted toward Hogun, only to find his shadow, then turned back, but Volstagg stood there, and threw himself onto the villsvinsvart’s head, fitting his bulk between the sharp tusks, pulling it down by the nose toward the ragged dirt and churned grass, allowing Sif to straddle the thing’s neck like a saddle mount and hack at its throat. Her blade was sharp enough to fell trees in a single sweep, but the coarse hair turned the blade and even this close kill required multiple strikes. The beast’s blood covered them both, and stained Thor’s cloak as he pulled himself from the mud. 

Thor sighed, “You’ll make me less …”

“Mangled?” Loki suggested, helpfully.

Thor narrowed his eyes in irritation and continued “…when you tell this story to the court, won’t you, brother?”

“Voltagg’s telling it now, so your honor is cleaner than your shirt. He’ll have the two of you bringing it down together while Sif and I canoodle in the woods.”

Thor nodded. “He is a romantic,” he said, ignoring the rest.

Loki’s glance was sharp, but his smile was fond. “Yes, a romantic. Our Volstagg.” 

“Funny, though,” Thor said. “I don’t even remember the last part, getting up and out of the way as Fandral skinned the thing.” He shifted, then winced and lay back carefully. “Feh, I cannot talk to you like this, brother. Move over so I can sit up.” 

Loki leaned forward, one knee next to Thor, the other leg braced on the ground, to slide one hand under Thor’s shoulders as he pushed up against the clinging comfort of the divan, in order to pull him up without straining his ribs, his hips, the twisted knee, the thickly wrapped wound on his shoulder. 

Thor leaned against the armrest, his eyes closed and the edges of his mouth white with tension. He drew in a shallow breath, and let it out slowly. “I don’t need your help.” 

Loki picked up the book that had fallen during Thor’s movement and dropped it, again, on Thor’s uninjured side. “When do you ever?” 

\--::--

Years later, Thor, no longer princeling, no longer brother, ran his fingertips across the hide of the villsvinsvart that stretched in his rooms. He tapped the dagger marks that gaped along the flank of the hide, preserved in the trophy as were the slashing sweeping cuts of Sif’s killing blows. Loki had never admitted that he’d carried Thor from the kill, that the rough field dressing on his wounds that the healers had cut away were the green silk of a royal wardrobe. Thor had never mentioned the deception. Perhaps he should have.

He laid one palm on the tusks crossed in the center of the hide and whispered, “I need you, brother.” No one answered.

He took a step back and brought up a royal smile for the others wandering the room. “This one to Sif, please,” he said, “As it was her gift to me.” The attendant behind him bent to her notes and Thor moved on to what he would be taking in his self-imposed exile to Midgard.


End file.
